742 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1804 



lowing bridges in the order of suc- 

 cession which is here assigned them. 

 A bridge of three arches over the 

 river Touy; Pontar Towy, overtlie 

 same river, about ten miles above 

 the town of Swansea. This was of 

 one arch, its chord eighty feet, with 

 one cylinder over the haunches. 

 Bettws-bridge in Caermarthensiiire, 

 consisting of one arch, forty -live 

 feet in the span. Llandovery, 

 bridge, in the same county, consist- 

 ing of one arch, eighty-four feet in 

 the span, with one cylinder over 

 the arches. Wychbree-bridge, over 

 the river Towy, about two miles 

 above Morriston : this has one arch, 

 ninety-five feet in span, twenty feet 

 in altitude, with two cylinders over 

 each of the haunches to relieve 

 them. He built Aberavon-bridge in 

 Gliimorganshire, consisting of one 

 arch seventy-feet in span, fifteen 

 feet in altitude, but without cylin- 

 ders. He likewise built Glasbury- 

 feridge, near Hay, in Brecknock- 

 shire, over the river Wye : it con- 

 sists of five arches, and is a light, 

 elegant bridge. The arches are 

 small segments of large circles or 

 high piers, as best adapted to facili- 

 tate the passage of floods under the 

 bridge, and travellers over it. 



William Edwards devised very 

 important imjirovements in the art 

 of bridge-building. His first bridges 

 of one arch he fou.id to be too 

 high, so as to be dilficult for car- 

 riages, and eveu horses, to pass 

 over. The steeps at each end of 

 ^'ew-bridge in particular are very 

 inconvenient, from the largeness 

 and altitude of the arch. This pe- 

 culiarity, it is true, adds much to 

 its perspe(^tive effeft as a part of the 

 landscape ; but the sober market- 

 traveller is not recompensed for the 

 foil of ascending and descending au 



artificial mountain, by the compari- 

 son of a rainbow and the raptures 

 of a draughtsman. He avoided this 

 defeat in his subsequent works ; but 

 it was by a cautious gradation that 

 he attempted to correct his early and 

 erroneous principles, and to consult 

 the ease of the public, at the same 

 time that he surmounted the greatest 

 difficulties of his occupation. At 

 length he discovered, not by read- 

 ing, conversation, or any other 

 mode of extrinsic instrnftion, but 

 by dint of his own genius, matured 

 in the school of experience, that 

 where the abutments are secure from 

 the danger of giving way, arches of 

 much less segments, and of far less 

 altitude, than general opinion had 

 hitherto required, are perfectly se- 

 cure, and render the bridges much 

 easier for carriages to pass over, 

 and in every respect adapt them bet- 

 ter to the purjjoses of a ready and 

 free communication. Impressed 

 with the importance of those rules, 

 by which he had assiduously per- 

 fected his own practice, he was in the 

 hnbit of considering his own branch 

 of architecture as reducible to three 

 great requisites : durability, the 

 freedom of the water flowing under, 

 and the ease of the traihc passing 

 over. These are certainly maxims 

 of peculiar importance in bridges of 

 one arch, which are not only the 

 best adapted to situations where tre- 

 mendous floods occur, but in many 

 cases are the only bridges securely 

 prafticable in moupbiin vallies. 



The literary knowledge of Wil- 

 liam Edwards was at first confined 

 to the Welsh language, which he 

 could read and write from early 

 youth. He was supposed to be ra- 

 ther obstinate when a boy ; an im. 

 putation which generally rests on 

 gcniusj that sees beyond the scope of 



those 



